Dallas County commissioner cites lack of diversity on Parkland board

Two new members were added to Parkland Memorial Hospital’s board of managers Tuesday, but not without a fight.

Dallas County commissioners squabbled over the apparent lack of diversity on the seven-member board, which has two black members but only one Hispanic.

It “causes me a great deal of heartburn” that there is only one Hispanic, said Commissioner Elba Garcia, who nonetheless joined her colleagues in unanimously approving the two new members.

They are Dr. Paula C. Dobbs-Wiggins, a Dallas psychiatrist, who is black, and Stephanie L. Woods, a registered nurse, who is white.

“We talk about diversity,” Garcia said, “but if the numbers aren’t there, colleagues, this is just lip service.”

More Hispanic representation is important, she said, because of the county’s 40 percent Hispanic population and the fact that Parkland serves an even higher percentage of patients who are Hispanic.

“We have to have a team that has different expertise,” Garcia said. “I’m disappointed at the way the [selection] process went.”

Under state law, each of the five commissioners appoints one member to help run the tax-supported hospital. The entire court selects the final two board members at-large. The new appointees were the at-large members.

The Parkland board’s lone Hispanic member is Patricia Rodriguez Gorman. She is a construction consultant who has served as Garcia’s appointee for about three years. Two members are black: Dr. Winfred Parnell and Dobbs-Wiggins.

In 2011, the appointment of five new members to the board created the first minority-dominated panel in the hospital’s history. Four of the seven members were black or Hispanic.

Commissioner John Wiley Price said Tuesday that he understood Garcia’s anger. He has spent decades trying to increase black representation on the Parkland board, he said.

“I’m glad you finally feel my frustration,” he told Garcia. “I’ve been on the Commissioners Court for 28 years, and I’m still trying to fix this problem.”

County Judge Clay Jenkins said he tried hard to get Hispanic candidates who would meet Parkland’s leadership needs. All five commissioners were involved in the dozens of interviews during the selection process, which took nearly three months.

“We interviewed at least two dozen qualified Hispanic candidates,” Jenkins said. “The problem was the huge time commitment to a board that is uncompensated.

“Very few people had that sort of time commitment to balance with their families and their own jobs.”

The outgoing board members complained about long hours of service that kept them away from their families and careers. Dr. Roberto de la Cruz, who is Hispanic, and Eddie Reeves, who is black, resigned in August.

Jenkins said it is important to find board members who can help Parkland maintain government requirements.

The hospital was overhauled in the past two years to resolve patient-safety problems that threatened to eliminate its federal funding.

The incoming board members are expected to give the board greater depth in two troubled areas: nursing and psychiatric care.

Woods is an associate dean at Texas Woman’s University in Denton. She oversees the school’s Dallas campus, which trains nurses at Parkland and other nearby hospitals.

Dobbs-Wiggins has operated a private psychiatric practice in Dallas since 1996. She was a consulting psychiatrist at Parkland’s HIV clinic in South Dallas from 1995 to 2000.

They will serve the 14 months remaining on the two-year terms of their predecessors.

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